Gendercide 

Genocide portal
Scales of justice
Homicide
 
Murder
Note: Varies by jurisdiction
Assassination · Child murder
Consensual homicide
Contract killing · Honour killing
Lust murder · Lynching
Mass murder · Murder-suicide
Proxy murder · Ritual murder
Serial killer · Spree killer
Torture murder · Feticide
Manslaughter
in English law
Negligent homicide
Vehicular homicide
Non-criminal homicide
Note: Varies by jurisdiction
Justifiable homicide
Capital punishment
Human sacrifice
Feticide
By victim or victims
Suicide
Family
Familicide · Avunculicide
Prolicide
(Filicide • Infanticide • Neonaticide)
Fratricide / Sororicide
Mariticide / Uxoricide
Parricide
(Matricide • Patricide)
Other
Genocide / Democide
Gendercide
Regicide / Tyrannicide
v  d  e

Gendercide is a neologism that refers to the systematic killing of members of a specific sex, either males or females.1 The term is intended to be sex-neutral, but in mainstream feminism it is mostly used to refer to female victims (feminicide or femicide).citation needed

Contents

Femicide

Femicide is the systematic killing of women for various reasons, usually cultural. Femicide is seen as a gender crime. The word is attested from the 1820s.2

There have been reports of femicide in Guatemala City, Guatemala, and in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico3. The murders in Juarez, also known as las muertas de Juárez ("The dead women of Juárez"), and Guatemala were reportedly not investigated by the local authorities. Most of the women were raped before being murdered and some were mutilated, tortured and dismembered. In Guatemala City about 20% of the over 500 women murdered in 2004 and 2005 were killed in pairs, due to an (lesbian) "intimate relationship," according to Claudia Acevedo of Lesbiradas.citation needed

The most widespread form of femicide is in the form of sex-selective infanticide in cultures with strong preferences for male offspring, notably in the mainland of the People's Republic of China, India, and South Korea. These practices may result in demographic imbalance with an excess of males.citation needed

Viricide

Viricide is the systematic killing of men for various reasons, usually cultural. Viricide is seen as a gender crime. Viricide may happen during war to reduce an enemy's potential pool of soldiers.

Perhaps one of the earliest examples of viricide in recorded history occurred some time during the 600s BCE when Ionian pirates massacred the men of Miletus, forced the Milesian women into marriage with them, and settled the city of Miletus in the Milesian men's stead.4 It has been written that forever afterward the Milesian women would neither eat with their husbands nor address them by name.56

The most famed example of viricide in Western literature is recounted in the Book of Matthew in the New Testament of the Bible. If modern scholars are correct in establishing the birth of Jesus as around the year 3 BCE, the slaughter would have taken shortly thereafter. Matthew 2:16 states that Herod ordered what is known as the Massacre of the Innocents, which modern scholars note may be apocryphal7 rather than an actual historical event:


Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the magi.

—Matthew 2:16, New American Standard Bible

In 627 CE, the men and boys of the Qurayza were beheaded by Muhammad8 after the tribe surrendered. They condition of the surrender were they would be tried and passed judgement by Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, a chief of their allied tribe of Aws. After asking what the punishment for treason was in Jewish law, all the males were decapitated.

A case of viricide can be found in World War II with the Nazi killing of Soviet POWs. Over a period of about 8 months as part of Operation Barbarossa, between June 1941 and February 1942, the Nazis captured approximately 3.5 million Soviet POWs (almost entirely male) and subjected them to starvation, exposure, disease, and summary execution. Nearly 2.4 million of these prisoners died. These deaths were a premeditated part of the Holocaust (see Goering's Green Folder).

Pakistan targeted male intellectuals for extermination in the erstwhile province of East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh) during the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities9 Male Gendercide was also carried out by Pol pot in Cambodia, thanks to which a large percentage of Cambodia's present population are women.10 During the 1984 Anti-Sikh riots men were targeted overwhelmingly on account of them being breadwinners of the family.10 More recents examples include the 1988 Anfal campaign against Kurdish men and boys111213 in Iraq and the Srebrenica massacre of Bosniak men and boys on July 12, 1995.1415

Draft dodgers

Men who refused conscription in the military have been the target of forced labor, mutilation, and massacre in the nations of Angola, Ethiopia and Iraq16.

See also

References

  1. ^ Coined by Mary Anne Warren in her 1985 book Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection[1]
  2. ^ 2006 Random House Unabridged Dictionary
  3. ^ Femicide and Gender Violence in Mexico, retrieved on May 28, 2007.
  4. ^ 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica
  5. ^ A History of Greece by Connop Thirlwall, footnote at page 197. Accessed November 12, 2008 via Google Books.
  6. ^ The Cartoon History of the Universe by Larry Gonick Pg. 238]
  7. ^ Gendercide Watch: The Anfal Campaign (Iraqi Kurdistan), 1988
  8. ^ Srebrenica Timeline
  9. ^ Serbians Still Divided Over Srebrenica Massacre
  10. ^ Case Study: Military conscription/ Impressment

External links